Facebook ends platform policy banning apps that copy its features

December 04, 2018 / Josh Constine

Facebook will now freely allow developers to build competitors to its features upon its own platform. Today Facebook announced it will drop Platform Policy section 4.1, which stipulates Add something unique to the community. Don’t replicate core functionality that Facebook already provides. That policy felt pretty disingenuous given how aggressively Facebook has replicated everyone else’s core functionality, from Snapchat to Twitter and beyond. Facebook had previously enforced the policy selectively to hurt competitors that had used its Find Friends or viral distribution features.